I’m enjoying London and not as focused on blogging while visiting, but when I read Kevin Hillstrom’s post on Sharing Information with Executives, today – I immediately had some thoughts about it, which have been in my mind all day and decided to write about it now.  I like Kevin’s post and he’s  spot on, but his post and viewpoints therein are also somewhat disturbing; here’s what I mean:

…..The responsibility for ferreting out information is on you, dear analyst, because executives are not going to ever volunteer enough information to inform your work … in fact, in some cases, they simply cannot tell you the real reason for an analysis (i.e. they need numbers to determine if 5% or 10% of the workforce will be let go next month).

I think this is true, and feels all too familiar, but it also suggests the very nature and setup of many organizations, that employ analysts, are the real problem – Hillstrom’s suggestion to ask a bunch of subtle questions to ferret out of Executives, the real information they  don’t want to share (because they can’t or won’t tell us) reduces  delivery of analytics insights to some form of Machiavellian game, a game no one teaches you how to play.

I don’t think this is where we really should encourage people to go - even if, at the end of the day, what Kevin Hillstrom says, is right, for now. At the end of the year, this strategy of tricking an executive into giving information they are trying to avoid giving, so the analyst can do the job they’re hired to do – just compounds the problem of lousy communications.

….. An executive wants a loyal employee. But sometimes, loyal employees (I’ve done this) develop an “agenda”. And if the agenda is not congruent with the executive, look out. Maybe you want to do multivariate testing on the home page, but the executive you work for is having a battle with another executive in another department, and wants to “be right”. In this case, even though you are doing the right thing (by wanting to execute a multivariate test), you might appear to have an agenda (i.e. prioritizing testing over the executive). And once you appear to have an agenda, you are banished to the island of misfit toys. You’ll see this happen all of the time when a new executive takes a job — the new executive has a vision for what she wants to accomplish, and if your agenda is not aligned with the new executive, it doesn’t matter how good of a job you do, you’re going to be banished to the island of misfit toys.

Sounds like the only agenda that is allowable to follow is the one your boss has – implying you have to come into a job subverting any agenda you may have, to whatever the boss has as their agenda.   I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do, even, if, on the face of it, what Kevin Hillstrom wrote is actually true, and effective.

I believe it was Stephen Fry, who said on Tuesday, at the 140 Conference, that took place in London (I attended the morning sessions, once of which, Fry spoke at), that when he spoke to the people who run corporations, they aren’t asking the typical questions (like how will this product or service help me and my company, etc), rather, they’re asking to get guidance on how to accomplish what they want to achieve.

My take away is to  find the right person (the guy at the very top) to present information and receive guidance from, rather than the people under them – which, unfortunately, is what usually happens.

So ….. your a bright web analyst – but you have to spend all your energy proving your total loyalty to superiors (who also happen to be extremely insecure in their own positions), according to Hillstrom, leaving you next to nothing or no room to actually be creative, innovative – all that has to be subverted to the personal loyalty of the group and organization your in – even if that organization is largely dysfunctional.

I don’t happen to agree this is the way we should approach our jobs in order to succeed.  Maybe the organizations that do the best are the ones who aren’t structured this way – maybe all this work you have to do in order to get the boss to trust you by following their agenda, is what you would have used to come up with the creative solutions they needed (but don’t want to consider) in the first place.  If we are reduced to playing Machiavellian games just to get anything done, no wonder the results are pretty diluted.

Maybe, just maybe, the reason leaders of organizations are at the top, the most creative minds, is because, according to Stephen Fry, they don’t play those games; too bad, so many under them, do.   Maybe, that’s the problem we need to solve.

In a future post I’ll explore what to do about this situation.